SHENANDOAH
Official Page
Discovered
We had been playing together for quite a few months at the MGM club and had really put together a pretty hot little band. At least the community thought so. We had the biggest crowds in town and everybody from miles around used to come hear us play.
Robert Byrne…the guy that discovered us and co-produced our early hits. He was like a 6th member of the band to us.
It was around this time that I had become pretty good friends with Robert Byrne. Robert had just started writing songs for Rick Hall, the legendary record producer down at FAME recording studio where we all worked during the day. Robert had been having a lot of success with Earl Thomas Conley, Ronnie Milsap and lots of other folks writing hits like ‘Once In A Blue Moon’, ‘I Can’t Win For Losing You’ and ‘How Do I Turn You On’.
FAME Recording Studio where we recorded our earliest hits like ‘Two Dozen Roses’, ‘Next To You Next To Me’ and ‘Church On Cumberland Road’
Robert treated me like a little brother and in conversation one afternoon at the studio I told him he should come down to the MGM club and hear us play sometime. Well, he came down that very weekend. It was on a Friday night I saw him come in and sit at an open table. After our set, I went over and visited with him until time for us to go back up and play. He stuck around and stuck around and kept going on and on about how great the band sounded and what an awesome singer Marty was.
I was a little surprised when he showed up the very next night with friend, Tommy Brasfield. After our set, we all went over to say ‘hey’ and they told us they wanted to talk to us about something. Both of them had had a lot of success as songwriters over the years and it turns out Rick Hall had put together a deal with both these guys to go out and find someone talented enough to get a recording contract and he would fund the project in hopes of getting a recording contract. They told us that they had been looking all over the country for months and hadn’t found anyone they’d rather produce a record on than us. We were flattered of course but we really weren’t interested in going on the road. Some of the guys had young children at home. We said, ‘Take Marty and cut a record on him’. But they told us that Rick had already talked to the president of CBS records in Nashville and he had told Rick they were looking for a band.
The old CBS Records building when we signed with them in Nashville on 16th Ave.
It took Robert and Tommy a couple of weeks of assuring us we wouldn’t have to go on the road until we’d had a few hits but they finally convinced us to give it a try, even though we didn’t expect much to come out of it. We just thought maybe we’d pick up some extra cash playing in the studio and maybe get a song or two on the project. But finally we all agreed to do it.
Little did we know shortly thereafter we would be on the road traveling over 300 days pulling a trailer in a van. Looking back, I don’t know HOW we did it………